A Moment of Clarity – 30 Days of Writing Words

May 6, 2016

The title of this file is “a moment of clarity.” I write in files these days instead of the blog post editor within WordPress. The reasons are many, but the main one is that I really like to write in a little app called iA Writer.

But you didn’t stop by to read about my choice of writing tools. Or if you did, you’ll eventually be disappointed by this blog post.

Instead lets talk about that title. What in the world am I writing about “a moment of clarity” for.

Here is the simple truth. I’m not writing about a moment of clarity, it just seemed like a good title. Or perhaps subconsciously I was thinking about clarity and what I will write will end up being about clarity.

Whatever. What I really meant to write is a few words about the following.

It is Time to do Something Again

A couple of months ago, in January actually, I decided to spend 30 days doing one thing. It was something of an experiment in whether I could do that “thing” for 30 days or not. It was also a good way to give myself a framework to fit into, I had one thing to do every day… would I do it?

I learned a lot about a number of things during that month of vlogging. Yes, I recorded and posted a video for 30 days straight. If you are of the incredibly bored kind of human you can go over here to day one and watch each and every one of them. 🙂

The last week or so I keep thinking about January and how it was kind of refreshing to be “forced,” by my own mature decision making process (ok, not really, I kind of started on a whim) to do something that made me a bit uncomfortable at times and stretched what I knew how to do.

And I think I’ve decided, again a bit on a whim that I’d like to start writing again.

Writing Daily – the Guidelines

So basically for the next 30 week days I’ll be writing and posting a blog here. Since part of this exercise is to give myself a framework within which to operate I should probably lay out some of the ground rules.

Firstly I won’t necessarily be posting on Saturday’s and Sunday’s. Those two days of the week during May tend to be quite full. This is due in large part to strawberry season at my Dad’s farm… as well as the fact that I like to give myself a bit of a caveat to skip things.

Secondly the topic will not be set. If you are like me you don’t really think about one topic all the time. Some days my mind is running about one thing, other days it is following another little bunny trail off the side of a mountain and over a cliff. So I won’t be holding myself to some sort of topical constraint.

Thirdly I won’t hold myself to a hard limit of words written and published. However I think a good goal is 300-500 words per day. That seems doable and if I type at 50 words per minute should only take 7 to 10 minutes. Only that will never be how I write well.

Fourthly I’ll be writing in the mornings. I’ll tell you a bit more about this in the next section of this post.

Writing in the Morning – Why on Earth

So, I recently started a new job. This included a shift in my work hours. Where I used to work from 8 to 4:30 I now work from 9 to 5. Effectively that gives me an extra hour in the mornings (at least if I can drag my bones out of bed).

This extra hour seems to be a good opportunity to do something profitable. I don’t want to dive into work till I get to work so why not allow myself the privilege of filling some of that time with words?

Having said that, I plan to have each of these posts ready to go by 9 a.m. I’ll set them up to post automatically since I’ll be just getting in to work and I’d hate to spend my first 10 minutes at work finalizing a blog post. 🙂

Get These Posts Daily

Now, if you’d like to make sure you don’t miss any of these posts, the best way to do that is by going to the bottom of this post (supposing you are reading it on my blog) and fill out the little “subscribe by email” box. Once you do that (and confirm your email) I’ll make sure to send you these posts each day.

So… thats it… each week day for the next 30 week days I’ll be posting. Since this is Friday, I’ll be starting on Monday.

There. Now my conscience can rest in peace.

I wonder what would happen if I’d actually post this.

Or even do it?

Oh… if you want to download the image at the top of this post for a desktop background… here it is.

Comments

Ok firstly I’d like to clarify that while I did watch your vlogs as they were posted, I am *not “one of those incredibly bored humans”. I don’t believe in boredom. And I would like to commend you on having the foresight to commit to writing every day (almost) for 30 days, yet absolving yourself of any other constraints . I look forward to reading these and if that makes you write funny (as that kind of knowledge can do to me) than pretend I’m not here (I am so used to that). Have a great 30 days!